Hi! I’m Nix, and I’ll be explaining what the heck is going on here.

“A Bigger Shovel” is a phrase that comes from my teacher, which is from a phrase that Sir Terry Pratchett (GNU) said a few different times in a few different books:

But the reward for lots of work seemed to be lots more. If you dug the biggest hole, they just gave you a bigger shovel.

– Sir Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd’s Crown (quote found on Goodreads)

I am a student: I am a Seeker on the Path of Light with Renewal Coven, a lineaged oathbound mystery tradition that dates back before the founding of Rome. The rituals we do on full and dark moons are the same as they have always been, because to do otherwise is to betray the tradition. There may be many of us and there may be few of us; most of the time, it doesn’t matter. We are here to make things better; to leave the world better than we found it. We are here to bring light into dark places, places where many others cannot or will not go.

The job is dangerous. The job is fulfilling. The job is, for most of us on this path, our life’s journey. I call it the Work, because for me it is the only way I have been able to understand myself, my place in the world, where my responsibilities lie and where they do not, and how to orient myself in a cosmos that is full of mysteries beyond what I grew up imagining and wishing were true.

And doing the Work? Doing the Work is difficult and sometimes impossible — and doing the Work means being rewarded with more Work. We groan amongst ourselves when we find out we’ve been given a bigger shovel, because to us this means that our Work was appropriate and effective, and that because we could be trusted with that, there is more to come — and that it’s possibly going to be more challenging than the last thing we did.

There is always more Work than people to do it. This website is meant to be a collaborative publication, written by people who are doing the Work, in different ways and sometimes for different reasons.

(Hilariously and, of course, ironically, the idea for this website has been part of my Work and was almost certainly a bigger shovel.)

I hope that you take from this writing what you need; and I ask that you share it with anyone you know that needs to read it too.

xox, Nix

P.S. It is difficult for me not to refer to Sir Terry Pratchett as Saint Terry Pratchett. He is an ancestor of spirit to my small circle, affecting our lives in potent and specific ways, with his writing and his words and his particular way of being; in much the same way as Carl Sagan, David Bowie, and Leonard Nimoy.